What makes a campaign successful? “It depends,” is a well-established, go-to answer for consultants, but that doesn’t mean it is an altogether unhelpful response. From leadership, to donor engagement, to giving history at the institution, successful campaigns do, in fact, “depend,” on numerous important variables. One variable, though not often discussed, is exceptionally predictive of […]

I’ve been running now for about 10 years (actually, I jog, but that sounds 1980ish). Over those years, I’ve only experienced two injuries that were painful enough to sideline me this activity that I’ve grown to love. One of those injuries occurred about 8 years ago. It was a sharp pain on the outer side […]

I’ll start this post by professing that I am neither a technological luddite nor hypocrite. I value and gladly utilize technology – in all its forms. Heck, I’m communicating with you via a distributed, social technology that makes our large world wonderfully and magically small. Technologies, especially social technologies, such as social media, wikis, blogs, […]

It’s easy to focus on “the gift.” What is the amount we are seeking? For what purpose? Over what period of time? We talk about the gift in strategy sessions, when we ask for it, and when we receive it – especially when we receive one of significance! We write proposals that answer the questions […]

Within the U.S. space industry, the term “go fever,” refers to the general idea that engineering teams sometimes rush to get a project completed or a program implemented without taking the appropriate time to assess problems or concerns. “Go fever,” was identified as a contributing factor in both the Space Shuttle Challenger (1986) and Space […]